Stop, Look, Listen

We hear daily reports that President Obama has made this or that decision
about how many more troops to send to the Afghan front; the numbers vary. This
Reuters report headlines "four options" the president is considering,
but then names only three: sending 15,000, 30,000, or 40,000. Is the fourth
option getting the heck out of that hellhole, before we destabilize the entire
region?

No way, no how. The numbers may change, but what doesn’t vary is the fact that
this is quite
obviously a political and not a military decision: it’s all about what’s
happening in Washington, and not about what’s occurring
on the ground in Afghanistan and environs. And the Washington political culture,
which sees government action as the cure-all for society’s ills, is not about
to take inaction as the cure for anything. We must "do something"
– even if it means playing
right into al-Qaeda’s hands.

America’s leaders never knew what hit them on 9/11, and they still don’t. The
U.S. response was to launch a conventional war against nation-states – Afghanistan,
then Iraq – when neither of these constituted the
real enemy.

Now we are inching into Pakistan, which
is rapidly
being destabilized
by our
efforts. Seymour Hersh’s latest
report from that country draws a dark portrait of a nation on the brink,
with President Asif Ali "10
Percent" Zardari sitting atop a volcano – one that could erupt in a
nuclear-powered explosion that sets the world aflame.

With the Pakistani military and civilian establishment seething
with resentment at the imperiousness
of their American patrons and overlords, and the corruption of an entire society
feeding into a fundamentalist backlash, the whole country seems ready to come
apart at the seams – and this, ironically, is the latest rationale
for massive U.S. intervention.

It doesn’t seem to matter that our intervention caused the initial disruption
– more action on the part of Washington is always
the answer to every problem. The harder we press the Pakistanis, the more they
resent us and the closer we come to pushing them into a religious-nationalist
reaction and the possibility of a military coup – a coup, I might add, in which
the resulting government would be no more favorable to our efforts in Afghanistan
and elsewhere than, say, the former regime of Mullah
Omar. Pakistani military officers in the know urge us to negotiate with
the Taliban, but Washington is deaf to their pleas. Even now, according to Hersh,
we are making arrangements to seize Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal in the event
it’s in danger of falling into Islamist hands.

Our continuing and deepening
alliance with India – the only country not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty with which we’re engaged
in nuclear commerce – rightly troubles Islamabad. Indeed, it is their main concern,
quite apart from the growing Islamist insurgency within their own borders. Pakistan
and India have fought twowars over
the disputed region of Kashmir – yet another legacy of British imperialism we
must now bear the brunt of – and U.S. actions have done nothing to tamp down
the growing tensions. Kashmir,
which is overwhelmingly Muslim
and pro-Pakistani, is no more a part of India than is South Dakota; despite
that, we treat New Delhi’s claim on a par with Islamabad’s – yet another reason
for the Pakistanis to resent their "Big Uncle" in Washington.

We can’t withdraw from Afghanistan, say the warbots, because that will leave
nuclear-armed Pakistan easy prey for Osama bin Laden and his confreres. This
argument is nonsensical in several respects, the most obvious being its circularity:
our deepening involvement has fueled
the recent surge in support for the Pakistani Taliban insurgents, whose attacks
on government installations (including the central
military headquarters) have underscored the essential weakness of the current
regime. More U.S. interference cannot strengthen the government’s position,
only weaken it – yet we barrel ahead, oblivious to the quicksand in which we
and our allies are sinking.

The frantic behind-the-scenes machinations to secure Pakistan’s nukes have
the disturbing aura of a self-fulfilling nightmare: the more we assert our
presence and advertise our primacy, the more likely it is that the whole delicate
fabric will come apart in our hands.

Bin Laden’s boys don’t need a "safe haven" to launch attacks on the
U.S.: 9/11,
and, more recently, the
Ft. Hood massacre, taught us that. But we refuse to learn. We’re still fighting
this war the old way, and we don’t even see the enemy. Oh, we rail
against bin Laden and are supposedly still trying to capture him, yet all our
mighty efforts are aimed at proxies: the Taliban, their Pakistani allies, and
states that allegedly "harbor" terrorists. What’s needed is the kind
of precision that only superior intelligence-gathering capabilities can provide
us with. Instead, we go wading into southern Afghanistan and the tribal areas
of Pakistan armed with a blunderbuss,
when what we really need is a well-sharpened stiletto.

The president is taking a long time to make his decision about what course
to follow in Afghanistan, and I, for one, am glad of it. The White House realizes
the vastness of the stakes and is understandably reluctant to rush right in
without at least preparing its political allies for a most unpromising fight.
Nevertheless, the only option that makes any sense – ending the "Af-Pak"
misadventure before it gets out of hand and shifting to an intelligence-based
covert offensive – is not on the table.

Before we jump into an abyss from which there is no extrication, we need to
stop, look, and listen: stop
the war, look
at the damage we have already done to the societies we’ve invaded, and listen
to what our enemies are saying before we undertake to engage them in battle.

Bin Laden has said more
than once
[.pdf] that he intends to draw us deeper and deeper into hostile territory,
where, bankrupt and besieged, we’ll be caught flat-footed as al-Qaeda strikes
once again deep within our own territory. Mocking us, the destroyer of the twin
towers has observed
that he has only to hang a scarecrow in some distant field and label it "al-Qaeda,"
and the Americans come running with their armies of occupation. In the meantime,
however, as he put it in another
message,

"As for the delay in carrying out similar operations in America, this
was not due to failure to breach your security measures. Operations are under
preparation, and you will see them on your own ground once they are finished,
God willing."

Our government’s actions aren’t protecting us; instead, we are endangered as
never before. Rather than defeating the enemy, our foreign policy has only empowered
him. That is the record since 9/11, and if we don’t stop, look, and listen,
we are headed for catastrophe sooner rather than later.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

Well, our new, more subtle approach to fundraising seemed to work for a while.
On the first day we garnered around $6,000 in contributions, the best we’ve
done in quite a while. The second day, however, wasn’t so great – about half
that, roughly. So it looks like I’m going to have to throw subtlety to the
winds – it never was my shtick, anyway – and start up with my usual hectoring.

Okay, look: the comprehensive daily coverage of international affairs provided
on this Web site doesn’t come free. Oh, I know, you don’t have to pay to get
our content – you’re most definitely not dealing with Rupert Murdoch here.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t have costs. Everyone does. Those costs aren’t
all that great. $70,000 per quarter is peanuts when we’re talking about running
an organization that reaches a million-plus readers every month. Talk about
efficiency: we’re reaching more readers per dollar than the evil Murdoch and
his minions could ever conceive of in their wildest dreams. And we’re doing
it with no organizational or institutional support: we have no big donors,
there’s no highfalutin’ think-tank behind us, and we’re not beholden to any
political party or faction. Here you get the facts, without the spin, about
what is going on in the world and how it affects you.

Whatever contribution you make, it’s a small price to pay for the truth about
U.S. foreign policy, so please let us go back to the subtle approach. It’s
so much less intrusive than our traditional table-banging method. You know
we deserve your support – and now is the time to give it. Contribute
today!

Author: Justin Raimondo

Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].

"what we really need is a well-sharpened stiletto"
You mean "targeted killings" with more efficient total surveillance to combat "our enemies."
We ought to mind our own business, that's what we need to do.

dan

Yeah, minding our own business would be a good idea. Otherwise, we're all gonna pay for this. It's our job to keep our government under control. And if we don't do it, someone else will. And we aren't gonna like that someone else's methods.

dan

I kinda liked the more intrusive, traditional table-banging method of fund raising:) And keep pestering us about clicking through your site to buy stuff on Amazon! I love that method. It makes me feel better about spending money that I don't have.

Also, I actually read the pages that are put up during the fund raising. They seem like part of the news that I come here for in the first place. But I've been conditioned by other sites to just click on those "subtle" popup windows to get them out of the way.

there may be more willing to donate if Antiwar demonstrated acceptance of 'FREE EXPRESSION". Please note that writing criticism of Israel brings a stop with a message that remarks are "too long" even though only 220 words had been written. Other remarks contain 600 or more words with the content less factual. There needs to be change at Antiwar in the "editorial" department. There is indeed too much bias reflected in its operations.

There's certainly an overarching suicidal element to this all. Like Nietzsche's theologians whose "will to the end, the nihilistic will, wants power" – or perhaps the later Freudian concept of hidden death wish of an overfed ego in some postmodern simulacrum, detached from any human measure.

Yet there are still many other ways to downsize, to reinvent oneself, turning away from the call of the roof edge. It might need to be screamed indeed if not repeatedly reasoned out. Or did we leave the age of reason altogether and is power the only word?

This is not a "blog," and I suggest you scuttle back into your hole: we don't need any commentary from "Nazis for 'Peace'". Ugh.

generalissmo x

stop look and listen!? those would be the actions of a rational organism…which is precisely why you will never see anything like this occurring in the emerald city run by the puppet emperor and his minions. these pigs have bankrupted our republic and our enslaving us all.
as for ft. hood, that was nothing but a classic psy-op to rally the sheep behind more war..this whole "surprise" element is such BS it's pathetic and is the same MO as 9-11. and wow, shock violence on a military base. who'd think a bunch of war mongers and violent miscreants would meet an untimely end. if they are victims, its victims of the u.s. gov't. insane deceptions. you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

Since 2007, more than 70,000 service members have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury — more than 20,000 of them this year. “The notion of ‘a wheeled armored constabulary force’ as a prescription for a close combat situation is nonsense.”ref:Afghan insurgents make wreckage of U.S. armored vehicles. Soldiers spoke out of what they said was a heightened concern about their vehicles' vulnerability to ambushes, especially on mountain roads where there's no room for the vehicles to turn around. The hideously expensive ($1+ million USD per vehicle), grossly overweight (7 to 24 tons, depending on the model), modern American armored truck: prone to rolling over because of its high center of gravity; unable to operate off-road, yet susceptible to electrocution of its occupants as a result of hitting power lines; incapable of either fording muddy streams, or traversing most bridges; impossible to air-lift by C-130 aircraft, requiring C-17's (at $750,000. per lift) or specialized sealift and overland carriers; consuming obscene quantities of fuel, even while not moving ~ to sustain all its electronic and life support systems in the middle of a hostile desert…

…unsure of where it's going, yet unable to turn around; by design destined to be used over and over again until expended; unlikely, ever to come home again, whole. I can think of no better metaphor for "our strategy" during this War, than the illusion that a Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected vehicle suitable for the purpose of military occupation, exists.

This is all an absurdly deadly joke being played out upon us at our expense by the very people who claim to be "defending" us. You'll never get enough "intelligence" or troops or money or whatever because thats all window dressing for the great charade being played. All the squawking going on by the very agencies who more than likely brought about this tragedy is nothing but high theater to distract and confuse you. There will never be a "resolution" unless its to the elites favor and it'll be on your dime while shedding your blood. Don't fall for any of it.

Rushmore

"America’s leaders never knew what hit them on 9/11, and they still don’t. "

Unfortuately, American political leaders have never been able to learn and "stop, look and listen." This is because they have always been controlled by a rich, powerful and imperialistic "military-industrial complex" of some sort another going back to the early 19th century. This was posted recently on lewrockwell.com: "When the US invaded Mexico (1846-48) to seize much of its territory, the US troops burned Catholic churches, raped Mexican women, and desecrated the Blessed Sacrament. They also taunted the small Catholic minority in the US army, most of whom were Irish and German immigrants, and who were horrified at what the US army was doing. In response, many of them left and joined the attacked side. The “San Patricios” were called traitors by the US, and many were executed after the US won the war. Of course, the Mexicans saw them ina different light." The American political-military-banking-corporate establishment will never change. They were liars, thieves and murderers from the beginning and remain that way today.

What follows after stop, look, listen is think, and that's not something Americans like. Americans do, and then do some more, and if it all goes to heck, then there's more to do. We are a nation of action and our actions are justified by virtue that they are done by us since we've already defined ourselves as god's country.

The US strategy seems to be borrowed from Israel: create chaos all around you and everywhere and that improves things somehow.